Biography
Jeff Wanshel's plays, including The Disintegration Of James Cherry, Auto-Destruct, Isadora Duncan Sleeps With The Russian Navy, (a version of which featured Meryl Streep in the title role for which the late Marian Seldes later won an Obie Award), and Holeville (with songs and direction by Des McAnuff) have been produced by, among others, the American Place Theatre (New York), A.C.T. (San Francisco), BBC Radio (London), Circle Repertory Co. (New York), the Dodger Theatre at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Magic Theatre (San Francisco), the Manhattan Theatre Club (New York), National Public Radio (directed by John Madden), the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center (New York), Yale Rep (New Haven), and the Yale Cabaret (New Haven). James Cherry has been performed extensively across the country and abroad; a translation into Serbo-Croatian surpasses the original. Commissions include the Actors Theatre of Louisville and New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater. The National Theatre of the Deaf production of OPHELIA toured the U.S. and Ireland. Actor Troy Kotsur (Academy Award winner, “Coda”) played Hamlet. Wanshel's adaptation of James Thurber's "The Greatest Man in the World" was broadcast over PBS in the "American Short Story" series, which won a Peabody. The complete script is published in The American Short Story Vol. II (Dell, twenty printings). A Metamorphosis in Miniature,, produced by the Music Theatre Group/Lenox Arts Center, a Kafka adaptation directed by Martha Clarke, featuring Linda Hunt, won Wanshel an Obie Award for Best New American Play and was on the cover of the precursor to American Theatre. Among directors with whom Wanshel has worked are critics who should have known better, such as the late Martin Esslin and Richard Gilman; Times and Appetites of Toulouse-Lautrec (with clowns by Bill Irwin) featured songs of the period adapted by the late Michael Feingold. Wanshel’s plays have been developed at La Jolla Playhouse under Mr. McAnuff, the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater under Joe Papp, Florida Studio Theatre (Sarasota), Sundance Playwrights Laboratory, the Yale Drama Alumni Project New York and the Yale Drama Alumni Project Los Angeles, among others. A Dostoevsky adaptation, The Double, was developed in Los Angeles at The Classical Theatre Lab in workshops featuring Tony Shalhoub (Monk), Richard Schiff (“Toby” on The West Wing), and Jessica Hecht. Five plays have received staged readings at the National Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Connecticut. Five of his plays are published by Broadway Licensing's Dramatists Play Service imprint, and two are published by the Playscripts imprint. Wanshel has received sundry residencies and fellowships, among them three Rockefeller Awards in Playwriting, two NEA grants, and two grants from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Wanshel has taught at Manhattanville College and SUNY Purchase, where the late Edward Albee and the late Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott joined him for class, and guest-taught (single-session) at Columbia University, Wesleyan University (twice), the National Theater Institute, and, at that gentleman’s request, with Mr. Albee at The Dramatists Guild.
